


The Subtle Dichotomy Betweeen On-Base and Off-Base

by orphan_account



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: M/M, Military, Pre-Canon, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:51:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles and Bass have one relationship on-base, and another off-base.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Subtle Dichotomy Betweeen On-Base and Off-Base

The drive isn’t just important, it’s necessary. They’ve been off-base for forty-eight hours, and gotten drunk together. Pretended that the things they’ve done on-base together aren’t who they really are. When Miles and Bass get together on-base, hands groping, always and only below their waists, it’s just to relieve a need. Off-base…that’s where they pick up girls. Girls who are all about texting and never about phone calls. Girls who are what they claim they really need, really want.

But Miles knows it’s not quite as simple as it seems: furtive hand jobs on-base for necessity, girls off-base for desire and luxury. If it were just the difference between on-base and off-base, they wouldn’t have to drive so far. They wouldn’t have to drive at all. There are a hundred, five hundred, women within a mile of their base for that. 

No, they need the buffer that is getting into Miles’s car to go find women who aren’t military groupies. Bass needs girls who are too young, too _unprofessional _for phone calls.__

__Miles…well, his needs are more complicated. More complicated than he wants to share with Bass. Or maybe they’re simple; maybe his needs _are _Bass. Maybe even Bass’s needs are truly all Miles. But Bass is also all mindless, emotionless appetite: taking Miles’s hand, once even his mouth, pretending it’s only like that because they’re stuck on-base. Miles is surprisingly okay with that. With the other secrets he has to keep, being Bass’s dirty little secret fulfills a strangely basic need within himself. Miles tries not to think about that off-base: what he and Bass get up to when they’re trapped on-base.___ _

____Then it happens. Miles’s cell phone rings; that Nokia tune that’s bugged everyone on the planet since at least since "Love, Actually" came out, if not before. It’s one of their little jokes, his and his brother’s. Using the grating, ubiquitous ringtone for Ben always makes Miles laugh because he knows it’s his brother calling: the ultimate high-tech guy defined by a default ringtone.___ _

______But now Ben’s calling him for what Miles will soon realize is the worst reason. In retrospect, it’s a call that changes everything, even though, in the moment, it's borderline nonsensical. Ben’s bitching about how he’s been trying to call Miles, but being really stingy on the details when it comes to why. In the passenger seat, Bass is going on about his twenty-two year old conquest and the sexy pictures she’s sending him; if Miles cared at this point, he’d guess Bass’s new girlfriend is eighteen at best. Ben’s barking about “everything” going out. And never coming back._ _ _ _ _ _

______It doesn’t help that Miles is trying to drive on a crowded highway. Later, he’ll think vaguely about all that luxury: driving a car, talking on a cell phone while Bass downloads sexy pictures from his own cell phone. Seconds before it all ends. Years later, he’ll wonder at it all: driving! Exchanging data! Things that went from being exotic science fiction to reality to improbable history in the space of a few years._ _ _ _ _ _

______But in the moment…it’s just Bass being an idiot in the passenger seat, Ben being cryptic and unhelpful on the phone, Miles repeating key words and phrases, just trying to get Ben to be more specific, but all he really does is inadvertantly give Bass hints he’ll put together later, and then the freeway suddenly being dark. And it’s the darkness that gets Miles, makes him realize that Ben’s ravings weren’t just lunatic nonsense._ _ _ _ _ _

______And he and Bass make it back to their base. Even in the midst of unprecedented catastrophe, the gate illuminated by glow-sticks, for fuck’s sake, Miles has his correct ID while Bass skates through on personal recognition and his ridiculous tattoo. The one Miles tries so hard not to think about, how he can see it on Bass’s left wrist when Bass’s hand rubs against him, holds him just like that, just like that when it’s just him and Bass, on-base, doing what they have to do._ _ _ _ _ _

______All of that seems inconsequential on the night of the Big Blackout. And Miles will spend the next fifteen trying to convince himself that it really is inconsequential. But he’ll also spend the next fifteen years knowing he’s fooling himself._ _ _ _ _ _


End file.
